Netanyahu is at a crossroads: Endless war, or peace?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a press conference in Tel Aviv in 2024. Photo by Nir Elias/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Columnist Dan Perry May 27, 2025

Amid mounting casualties, a humanitarian disaster, international isolation, deep societal malaise, and economic decline, Israel has no realistic plan and no moral compass. Hamas is evil, yes, but Israel is the side responsible for blocking the creation of an alternative, its leadership doing all it can to normalize the crazy narrative that there are no innocents in Gaza, including children.

The Gaza war grinds on mainly because it serves the political survival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That much was clear during his first press conference in five months last week, where he doubled down on the war effort and piled on a new condition for ending it: the delusional proposal floated by President Donald Trump in February — and since quietly abandoned — that Gaza be depopulated and replaced by unnamed residents of a “beautiful” riviera built by the United States.

This escalation is not accidental. It stems from the radical pressures exerted by his far-right coalition partners, who have built their political careers on messianic maximalism. They are not concerned with saving hostages or replacing Hamas with a more pragmatic Palestinian leadership. Their objective is perpetual war and an occupation of the Gaza Strip.

And yet, Netanyahu, for all his cynicism and amorality, could change the trajectory of this war and of his legacy. It would require a decision to stop being the prisoner of his coalition. Despite the tragedies since Oct. 7, an opportunity has actually been created for a grand realignment that comes close to completing the process that began in the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace agreement.

A realignment would begin with a ceasefire deal that brings much of the Arab world into a joint project of disarming Hamas. Weakened but not obliterated, Hamas will not surrender easily, unless the demands came from the other Arab states. Under coordinated pressure from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE and Qatar, who would massively reinforce the faltering Palestinian Authority with boots on the ground, most Palestinians in Gaza would choose new leadership over more war.

What the Arab states will need, and would demand in exchange for sidelining Hamas, is a credible Israeli commitment to a renewed political process — one that aims to lead, eventually, to a demilitarized Palestinian state. This would require Netanyahu turning his government away from annexationist and expulsionist fantasies and reclaiming its founding promise: a Jewish and democratic state, which shouldn’t control millions of Palestinians without rights.

Such a move may seem risky, because his coalition would crumble, but it is the more likely path to his long-term survival. The opposition — currently fractured, but still ahead in the polls — would almost certainly back a bold pivot toward diplomacy. A national unity consensus could form, giving Netanyahu an 8-to-12-month grace period to implement a postwar strategy with broad support before elections that must be held regardless by late 2026. The public, exhausted and seeking direction, would undoubtedly embrace a statesmanlike shift.

And then, there is the matter of Netanyahu’s legal peril. The prime minister has consistently delayed his trial proceedings due to Israel being at war. Yet a leader who ends the fighting, opens the door to peace and unites the nation would have the political goodwill to plausibly negotiate a plea deal in his corruption trial. More than that, he could find a soft landing in the form of the Israeli presidency — a ceremonial role with historical gravitas and none of the political risk.

The potential rewards for Israel beyond the Palestinian arena are immense. Normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia, long seen as the crown jewel of Israeli diplomacy, would become viable, expanding on the 2020 Abraham Accords. Other Arab states might follow, including Syria, newly emerged from decades of civil war, with more focus on survival than ideology and desperate for international legitimacy. Indeed, Israeli and Syrian officials representing the new regime have been reportedly meeting to discuss security matters, and the new Syrian president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has hinted he may be willing to join the Abraham Accords.

Given the weakening of the Hezbollah militia, a deal with Lebanon is also within reach, if the world keeps its promise to help the new Lebanese government disarm the militia.

Netanyahu has certainly been a damaging leader. But history is full of figures who reversed course dramatically, and in doing so changed not only their country’s trajectory but their own place in history.

Richard Nixon, the Cold War hawk, went to China. He did so not out of sentiment but out of strategic calculation — and in the process rewrote the geopolitical map.

In South Africa, few foresaw that F.W. de Klerk, the last president of the apartheid era, would astonish the world by dismantling the system that had upheld white minority rule for decades. It was a case of a reputedly hardline leader voluntarily moving toward justice and peace.

In the Middle East itself, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, once a loyal soldier of nationalist pan-Arabism, became the first Arab leader to visit Jerusalem and sign a peace deal with Israel. None of these leaders were saints, but each recognized a moment when the old narrative had run its course, and they seized the opportunity to write a new one.

Right now, the Israeli government is on autopilot, flying toward political defeat in the election that must be held by late 2026. Hostages languish. Soldiers die. International sympathy evaporates. Israel’s international legal difficulties are only the visible tip of growing diplomatic and generational alienation. Israel is losing the narrative.

Netanyahu, for all his flaws, understands narratives. This is his last chance: agree to end the war as part of a new narrative, which will have regional and global support. Trump will likely approve it as well — forever wars are for losers.